I actually think you could be a much more effective poster and that you are much smarter than the stuff you post here.

I've said this privately, but I'll make it public too. SL, I think you're an outstanding writer and a very intelligent person. I could have nuked you a long time ago but I enjoy your writing and have given you the benefit of the doubt on suspensions so many times I've lost count.

That said, I would encourage you to try to write more about things besides politics. I appreciate your input into the license plate and Vatican visit threads. Yes, I know most threads here are political in nature but feel fee to start your own about something else. For example, travel guides. I know you've been to a lot of places and you tell it like it is. How about take what you started with visiting Rome and give us more about other places in the world. Or anything else you want to discuss, besides The Donald. Thanks for listening.

I've said this privately, but I'll make it public too. SL, I think you're an outstanding writer and a very intelligent person. I could have nuked you a long time ago but I enjoy your writing and have given you the benefit of the doubt on suspensions so many times I've lost count.

That said, I would encourage you to try to write more about things besides politics. I appreciate your input into the license plate and Vatican visit threads. Yes, I know most threads here are political in nature but feel fee to start your own about something else. For example, travel guides. I know you've been to a lot of places and you tell it like it is. How about take what you started with visiting Rome and give us more about other places in the world. Or anything else you want to discuss, besides The Donald. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for the compliment, I do appreciate it. For what it's worth, I'm beginning to tire of the political crap anyway. There's not a chance in a billion that anybody is going to change anybody else's mind about anything. I in general have to acknowledge a hard truth--that the things that horrify me about recent political developments--the resurgence of bigotry, hatred, xenophobia, populism, and disrespect for the truth--are the very things that absolutely delight a significant portion of the populace. Can I fix that? No! It's a shitstorm, and all I can do is make sure I'm not out in it any more than absolutely necessary.

About travel--I think that if more people traveled to other countries, there would be less of the stuff I mentioned above. The more places I go, the more things I see, the more people I meet, the more evident it becomes that we all want to be happy, prosperous, and healthy and want to see our children grow up and live even better lives than ours--whatever color or flavor or nationality we happen to be. I suppose that's why I see purple when I hear all this racist alt-asshole talk and see people who embrace it elevated to high positions. I know better than to believe all that "the other" crap. And travel is probably the single most significant driver of that basic knowledge for me.

Think of that Oroville Dam stuff: the risk is in northern California but people in Southern California would have to pay for the infrastructure.

That is the essence of this Calexit/Cascadia stuff. The geographic rift between living spaces and laws. You can live in the Redwoods but your laws come from the Bureau of Land Management. You can live in a community where everyone has been a pot grower for three generations but your laws are not local. A fugitive happens to be arrested in a rural area and some judge in Los Angeles insists you pay for his defense team and their jury consultants when your town has no ambulances, no fire engines and no hospitals.

Think of that Oroville Dam stuff: the risk is in northern California but people in Southern California would have to pay for the infrastructure.

That is the essence of this Calexit/Cascadia stuff. The geographic rift between living spaces and laws. You can live in the Redwoods but your laws come from the Bureau of Land Management. You can live in a community where everyone has been a pot grower for three generations but your laws are not local. A fugitive happens to be arrested in a rural area and some judge in Los Angeles insists you pay for his defense team and their jury consultants when your town has no ambulances, no fire engines and no hospitals.

You can flip that first part around, though. Northern California has never had a water problem. All of the massive projects of the last several decades, including the Central California Project, of which Oroville Dam is a part, were built to satisfy the "needs" of Los Angeles. I put that in quotes because much of L.A.'s growth has been due to the fact that all that imported water was available, Thus, the need and the supply came in reverse order.

Without that water, the water resources of the L.A. basin could support perhaps 100,000 people. That's why L.A. appropriated the Owens River in the 1920s. That's why L.A. water originates in places like the high mountains of Wyoming and Lake Shasta. The joke is that so many of these water projects weren't built to serve demonstrable needs--they were, in effect, giant economic stimulus packages, gifts to compliant governors of cooperative (or demanding) states during the middle of the 20th century. They're still largely unnecessary even today, in that if L.A. behaved like a desert city--which it is--there wouldn't be this insatiable demand for water. And if California farmers hadn't been conditioned by the availability of all that cheap water, they'd use responsible irrigation practices instead of flood irrigation, which would reduce their water usage by 2/3 or more.

So yeah, the rest of California, and much of the rest of the West, is a giant resource colony for Southern California that pays the bills, undergoes the risk, and suffers the ecological damage from L.A.'s thirst. If Oroville Dam had failed, the people that died would have been sacrifices on the altar of L.A. swimming pool culture. But you know what they say: in the West, water flows uphill toward power and money.

What all this means for Calexit is that California would no longer be able to appropriate water from outside California's borders. That might lead to a renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact, which is a terrible agreement anyway.

This would have more chance than Calextit. It would also make Calexit more likely as the inland areas are not the looney bin that the coastal areas have become. The area north of SF could go with the east. This might longer term make Calexit more likely as the population of the coastal areas would be more in favor.

If it happens it is still a long process, 15-20 years.

The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it

Certain areas have already exited.The Lost Coast Area exited forty years ago. No roads. No tax revenue. Carmel by the Sea exited twenty years ago. Millionaires only...no poor people permitted to cast their shadow on OUR coast).Siskyou county exited ten years ago. (Weed, etc).Big Sur exists due to parking and camping enforcement.

California is showing more and more signs of being a gilded society. But it is starting to look more and more like China. Few rich areas hugging the coast with a far less well off interior. Years ago, it was not such a difference, CA had some great manufacturing and of course agriculture. Now liberals in the cities who think food comes from the grocery store and gas from the gas station are voting more and more policies that make life outside those cities harder and harder.

Thinking outsiders like myself keep wondering just how on earth people survive in this state. Sky high prices and long commutes unheard of in most places. I guess some places just are not making it.

Calexit question is would the state split up first? Maybe it would.

The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it

Many states have distinct economic/political regions. Washington and Oregon each have a wet west and a dry east. Rural agriculture and urban economies often clash. There are some towns with more horses and dogs than people in rural Washington... and they are proud of it. Lousisianna has always had three distinct regions based on language, climate, cuisine, etc. Upstate New York has always been at odds with New York City. Yet there are no secession movements other than humorous ones. The only successful secession movement was the Conch Republic and that took place solely in press releases and chambers of commerce. Of course one 'secession' movement that suceeded was in the retirees mecca of sun city where the school district was forced to secede in order to get any funding at all.

San Francisco real estate skyrockets yet few flock from Bakersfield. Even those Inland Empire communities have real estate prices that are mind boggling in comparison to the local economy.

Look to NY. For decades the urban dwellers wanted abortion laws... and the abortion bill always went to the rural dominated agriculture committee where it was certain to die in the overwhelmingly Catholic committee. No one ever tried to form a secession movement over it.

Isn't that the history of humanity? The more and more you read about older societies you see areas of the country where the consumers in the economy collect.

Tokyo was like that in the Middle Ages. Certainly the gold from the New World made the region around Seville Spain the wealthiest society that had ever lived up to that point in the 15th century. As one architect said, we will build buildings so that future generations will think we were mad.

Money makes you Poor !

It's an old saying, but look how Spain decayed from the world's richest into one of the poorest regions of Western Europe. Economists say that given money you forget how to make things.

Money drives out quality. Craftsmen can not survive an assembly line. If the craftsmen don't survive then their skills and work ethic will not either. Wealth of mercantile centers such as Seville, Spain or Venice, Italy erodes manufacturing ability and defense ability. When there is money in owning a warehouse and hiring a mercenary, merchants do not own factories and defend their own property. Shaker furniture and houses still last, but Shaker communities died out long ago. Amish traditions may linger but each Amish man repairs his own buggy, there are no buggy manufacturers.

Innovation? Seems to be coming from the mega-millionaires of Silicon Valley who are simply throwing money at their hobbies. Everything else is becoming foreign owned.